So many amazing women are being called to walk the Priestess Pathway at this moment in time. 

We find our way here because we are in love with the Goddess and the journey of devotion that the Priestess Pathway embodies – her stillness, her radiance, her reverence of life and her profound uncompromising connection to the Divine Source Herself.

We dream of ancient sisterhoods of lavender-cloaked women, harvesting yarrow and comfrey, waking at dawn to sing in adoration for the Goddess and to watch the first honey-laden rays of sunlight seep into the world… and we wish we could find a way to live that in the modern world. 

We are her Devoted Mystics. 

The word Priestess really encapsulates this powerful devotion to the Feminine Divine and so we follow the Priestess on our spiritual journeys…

… however, it’s very easy to get confused on what it actually looks like to be a modern day priestess.

To be a priestess, do I have to lead a coven?

Do I have to perform ceremonies?

Do I have to tell everyone that I am a Priestess and wear dripping goddess jewellery and be Relentlessly Obnoxiously Obvious?

Fret not friends. Priestessing has expanded from the old witchy days and covens of the 20th century and has morphed into something far more accessible and useful for us modern day mystics. 

In my humble eyes, there are THREE different paths to be a priestess, three different ways you can fulfil your calling of devotion to the divine.

Let’s begin with the most flashy, well known priestess pathway.  

The Leader Priestess

This priestess has stepped up into a place of spiritual leadership in the community. Perhaps she performs ceremonies and witnesses rites of passage for folks, maybe she runs red tents or organises seasonal festivals, or helps guide folk into a deeper experience or knowing of the mysteries of the goddess. 

She is a leader, a ceremonialist, a spiritual guide and a teacher, taking on the role of traditional Clergy in her community and doing clergy-like things.

She serves the goddess in a very public obvious way – hey over here, I am a priestess, I am your one stop shop for priestessy services, need anything goddessy rn?

This is what we usually think of when we think of Priestess – the one who stands by the ocean initiating women into the mysteries of the moon goddess, who teaches women to awaken their intuition in weekly classes, who holds the hands of the bereaved as they make funeral arrangements together, who leads the ceremony binding two lovers together in marriage. 

This priestess has made a very conscious commitment to step up into her power and be SEEN in a BIG WAY. She is standing up and showing up for the Goddess very publicly and very visibly, and in our imaginations she is very glamorous and magical and all knowing…

… but in reality it’s mostly sorting out mailing lists and washing cups and being a bit scared but doing it anyway.

In the last 20 years all sorts of Goddess-tradition priestess training programs have popped up and this is what they focus on teaching – how to be Goddess Clergy. One of the earlier well-known training programmes, the Glastonbury Goddess Tradition Priestess Training, began explicitly because Kathy Jones, the founder of the tradition, needed to have other women to help create and run ceremonies for her yearly goddess conference – she was training ceremonialists.

Ceremony isn’t the only path of the Leader Priestess however: the foundation of all priestessing is Devotion and Service, and the Leader Priestess is one who steps up to serve and hold the lamp of the Goddess for whoever needs it, using her own talents and strengths to do so – wether she is an amazing women’s circle facilitator, a great speaker, a phenomenal ceremonialist, or someone who is just really good at coaching others through spiritual crisis.

The Devotional Priestess 

The Devotional Priestess is at the heart of all priestess paths. This is the archetype of the priestess that lives the daily life of deep devotion and reverence of the Goddess. Her concern is maintaining a deeply personal connection with the goddess that informs her daily life and inspires her. She prays, sings songs, creates and lives in deep adoration of the Goddess. She awakens her intuition so that she may hear Her whispers. She loves the goddess deeply and serves Her through her celebration and adoration of Her, and sends Her ripples of love and influence out into the world through the alchemy and goddess energy that shines out from the devotee’s own life. 

However, this is a personal form of devotion. The Devotional Priestess has no need to step up and go Public with her work and begin facilitating the path for others – she’s not interested in this. Her heart is concerned with devotion, not leadership. 

This path of the priestess is the heart of the practice of the Leader Priestess too. The Leader Priestess has to have this core of devotion at the centre of her practice so she can continue to be lead and guided by the Goddess in all things she does. It is essential to her magic!

The Stealth Priestess

So this is goddess spirituality, not opposites-only spirituality, and there are as many ways to priestess as there are people willing to step up to it, and one million contradictions in all of them.  

There are many grey areas in-between these two kinds of priestess. 

One I think of often is what I call the Stealth Priestess. 

She has a very public mission to serve and heal the world in her own vocational way –  wether that is through theta healing or trauma counselling or being an artist or a herbalist or a psychotherapist or a park ranger or the person in the village who keeps an eye on the vulnerable old folks and arranges buses to the supermarket for them – and she carries out this vocation without banging on about the Goddess all the time.

The Stealth Priestess really relies on that low-key sensibility – it enables her to do her healing work and reach more people than she would if she was branding herself as a “Goddess Trauma Counsellor” or a “Goddess Artist” or a “Goddess-Based Herbalist” – and in some situations and places in the world, it’s much easier for her to do her priestess work without slapping the word PRIESTESS all over it. 

It’s about the sacred service and the healing, not the labelling. 

A Stealth Priestess does the groundwork of the Goddess without needing to tell everyone about her motivation for doing it. 

She knows that the world isn’t divided into Spiritual Bits and Regular Life – that they all blend together in a miraculous kaleidoscope of spiritual experience and nothing is truly disconnected from spiritual service. 

So she treats her accountancy wizardry as her priestess service, helping frustrated entrepreneurs chill out and manage their sacred money. 

She treats her dance practice as her spiritual service, going ever deeper into the practice of spiritual art so that in performance she might bring audiences into contact with the sacred. 

She treats her herbalist business as her priestess practice, bringing as many people into healing through plant medicine as she can. 

No one needs to know. 

Which Priestess are you?

So now you have learned about these three different ways you can show up as Priestess in the world, which Priestess Path do you feel most drawn to?

Are you a leader priestess, committed to showing up and sharing the Goddess with those who need her?

Are you a devotional priestess, dedicatedly loving the goddess and showing up for her in your own personal life and practice?

Or are you a Stealth Priestess, a Goddess Woman who stealthily helps and heals others in all professions and walks of life, secretly sharing the love of the Goddess everywhere you go?